


One Of Our Octokittens Is Missing

by Triss_Hawkeye



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Mention of the deaths of many adorable abominations, Yuletide Madness, extremely silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21913951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triss_Hawkeye/pseuds/Triss_Hawkeye
Summary: Ivy Alexandria keeps careful tabs on the octokittens.
Relationships: Ivy Alexandria & The Mechanisms, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina, The Mechanisms vs Octokittens
Comments: 26
Kudos: 150
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	One Of Our Octokittens Is Missing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morgan (duckwhatduck)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckwhatduck/gifts).



One of the octokittens is missing.

Ivy Alexandria keeps careful tabs on the octokittens. Not because they’re any kind of a threat (or even a real nuisance in Ivy’s opinion, though certain other Mechanisms would beg to differ). And not because she’s particularly concerned about their well-being (the general vicinity of Mechanisms is an environment hazardous to mortal life in general, and she’s honestly quite impressed at the creatures’ tenacity in the first place). 

But it has become somewhat of a treasured hobby of hers to document their activities and progress, taking note of interesting developments and their times of… appearance, and subsequent death. The longest-lived to date lasted seven years, five months and twenty-three days, mainly by hiding at the end of a narrow chute and refusing to come out. Ivy is not entirely sure how it managed to survive that long, although she has 76% confidence that the spiders had something to do with it. What their natural lifespan may be will require a lot more research in a more controlled environment. 

Ivy is thorough in her documentation of their deaths, disintegrations and even complete and utter disappearances. But there’s one entry that’s bothering her. According to all data she can compile on the individual, it is definitely still on the ship. And yet it is absolutely not there, not on any of the cameras, heat sensors, octokitten proximity alert klaxons—nothing. It’s a mystery, and Ivy will get to the bottom of it. It is really very important to her to keep her completion level of this particular database at 100%. 

She decides to ask the crew, to see if any of them know anything. Or are willing to claim responsibility. The results of her investigations are as follows:

Raphaella la Cognizi dissected an octokitten once. The unexpected nature of their innards did rather more damage than expected to her lab, so she hasn’t attempted it since. She does gain a rather wistful look in her eyes while speaking of it. Ivy remembers that incident, and notes the currently reasonably intact nature of Raphaella’s lab. It is unlikely to be Raphaella on this occasion.

Upon spending several minutes in consideration, Drumbot Brian can think of no good reason why harming, killing, or otherwise disappearing an octokitten would benefit anyone at the current time, and has personally never seen the need to do so. Upon flipping his morality switch, he appears to demonstrate absolute horror at the thought of inflicting harm upon those innocent creatures. Ivy flips the switch back again.

Jonny d’Ville tried to eat one once. He declares that it really wasn’t worth the effort, and that they are far too rubbery in all the wrong places. And gave him a stomach ache. Sometimes he shoots them, but only when they get annoying. Or when he’s bored. Ivy already knows this, as she has catalogued the Jonny-related deaths of 5726 octokittens to date. He’s not in the habit of subtlety, or of cleaning up after himself. So probably not him.

Marius von Raum once tried to determine whether the octokittens had a language. He got them to divide into two factions and almost persuaded them to go to war with each other but eventually got bored. Ivy recalls this with some annoyance. Any hope of piecing together their original social structure is probably lost now. Still, he concerns himself less with individual specimens, so it’s not likely to be him either.

Ashes O’Reilly has rather a lot more data on the octokittens than Ivy expects. Apparently they’re just not very flammable. If you set one on fire, they don’t burn all the way up, and there’s always some really unpleasant residue left over. Ivy mentally reclassifies a large number of cases she had attributed to unfortunate encounters with the engines, and also notes the lack of any residue for her missing octokitten. 

The Toy Soldier’s lines of reasoning are always a little strange. This time, it manages to get forty-five minutes and thirteen seconds into an in-depth consideration of fabric types, buttons, and sewing techniques before Ivy concludes that they are probably not having the same conversation here. It’s never possible to rule the Toy Soldier out entirely in cases like this, but Ivy reckons she can safely lower the expected probability.

Ivy already knows that for Gunpowder Tim octokittens are a rare creature that he will outright refuse to kill. Her conversation with him is rather short and logged verbatim:  
GT, [fury]: “Has Jonny decided to try eating one again? I swear to god, I will staple him to a wall and use him for target practice for a week!”  
IA: “No, he hasn’t.”  
GT, [disappointment]: “Oh, all right then.”  
IA: “Don’t let me stop you, though.”  
GT, [glee]: -extended sounds of manic laughter-

Nastya Rasputina’s inventiveness with the octokitten food carries with it an expected rate of casualties, but she tends to share the results of food trials with Ivy, so this is unlikely to be a cause either. Still, upon broaching the subject, the ship’s engineer looks thoughtful for a moment and mentions that Aurora has been complaining lately about a possible bug in her system. Perhaps that has something to do with it? Ivy agrees to help investigate.

Nastya is very protective of the Aurora’s inner computer core, so Ivy doesn’t get to see it very often. It pulses with a soft light, its simple smooth form punctuated by a small mass of fur and tentacles that has somehow… merged with it.

“Ah,” says Ivy. Nastya nods in agreement. They both kneel down to examine it more closely, and as they do so, they hear a quiet voice. 

“I wanted to grow beyond myself,” it says in a soft wail. It is not quite clear whether it is somehow speaking into the room or directly into their heads, nor which would be worse in this situation. “I wanted to gain sentience. I did. I gained so much more. A new body…”

The ship gives a rumble and judders off course. Aurora gives an indignant whirr and Nastya pats the computer core comfortingly. 

“It appears it has managed to gain control of some of the ship’s operations,” she muses.

“I’d theorise that ‘control’ is a rather generous term in this situation,” Ivy replies, as the ship gives another lurch and attempts to chase its own solar sail. 

Nastya sighs. “At this point, I’m not sure removing the, ah, physical component is going to fix this,” she says, gesturing forlornly at the still-twitching extrusions from her beloved ship’s brain.

Ivy ponders this. Then she has an idea. She sets aside some memory in her own brain, locks it off with maximally privileged access and a couple of different firewalls for good measure, then mounts the partition to the remote interface port she carries with her and, with a quick glance to Nastya for approval, plugs into Aurora’s systems. “Here, kitty kitty,” she says, experimentally.

She receives a sense of interest but otherwise no transferral from the octokitten. Hm. She sifts through her internal archives, looking for particularly appealing memories of lasers. Octokittens like lasers, right? She copies a selection across into the kitten partition. Sure enough, the sense of interest grows, and she feels the partition fill with data as the troublesome monstrosity transfers itself into her positronic brain. After it is complete, she disconnects and Nastya begins a system diagnostics check. Ivy just sits quietly in the corner, admiring the latest addition to her mental archive.

“Hello,” she tells the tiny mind that has joined her own. “Let’s be friends.”

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw that you'd signed up, I couldn’t resist. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Also, no octokittens were permanently harmed in the writing of this fic. No matter what happens to them, they always seem to come back eventually.


End file.
